Awkward

~PILOT /PART 1/~

I stop.

She might be in my spot right now.

I know it's possible that it's her spot but we can't both have it. The only fair way to settle it would be a battle to the death. But of course, I'd have to train for that first. She didn't seem like the type to mess with, reading a book like some sort of kung fu master. Yeah, I'd have to train.

Never mind, she can have it.

I look down the tracks, again. Nothing. I just have to see if she's still coming because it's killing me. I don't think either of us are even allowed to be here after school.

I crane my neck a little further and — bingo.

Brown visor, sports skirt, sneakers and a book - it's her.

I'm running again. I jog further, going all the way until the infirmary that's built at the end of the railroad.

The infirmary has a long roof. It looks like a big wave rolled off the top and froze onto some pillars. The train rests on the other side of the infirmary; the station and infirmary are conjoined like they're two parts of the same thing. Though it's after school so the infirmary is locked, the station is locked, maybe even the classrooms are locked.

My steps start to echo from the floor when I reach the classes, they're all similar red houses on black bottoms but they're really spaced out. Walking past one, I almost slip on nothing at all. It rained earlier.

Moving through the classroom area always feels like wandering through a little town. The way each building is on its own makes me feel as if one is a pawn store and another a weapons store and another an inn, maybe a restaurant - it isn't all ugly modern architecture.

The school is usually full. It's eerie when it's empty but I find myself with the energy to sprint again, speeding past empty windows accompanied by nothing but the sound of my own shoes drumming against the stone, wind whistling in my ears.

I stop, because I'm tired again; and I see the Assembly Hall. It's shaped like a flat head with enormous shoulders buried in the ground.

The Assembly Hall is a titan of a building, my favourite in the school.

Just past the Assembly Hall is the fountain famously known by students as 'the wishing well'. I reach in to get some coins just because. As I walk away, I can feel the lady sculpture glaring a hole through my cranium. But she's stuck. And I'm not. I'll be out the gates before she can say "you there!"
The security guard though, who, unlike the sculpture, is alive, gives me a condescending look and now I have to walk out the gates in shame.
My hand is wet too. And I didn't get any coins.

Outside the gate is a forest, but before that is a car park, an empty car park, where my father should be any minute. I'm always the last to leave school because he picks my little sister up from her school first so I have to wait here in the cold, everyday.

Until ten past six, always.

In the car park, there's a bench at one far end that I always go to, and once again it has to take me, even though it was clearly made for people just a little shorter.

In my bag, there's half a pack of shortbread biscuits and a soft drink that I was saving 'till now. The biscuits still taste fresh. I wash them down with my can. Then I eat the can.

Just kidding- I don't.

I put it back in my bag; it'd be a shame to litter here, or anywhere. The school's website says so.

The forest after the car park looks like the end of the world, but it isn't. It isn't even the start. There's a dirt road that splits the trees in two, where cars drive back and forth through the corridor, to the school and back home, always.